Far Future Fembot: Darlene

Someday I'm going to write a book. I'm going to call it: Ten Stupid Things Humans Do to Mess Up Their Relationships with Robots. Included on the list will be:

"No, you really don't have to ask me 'Is this going to hurt you?' before you press my Command button each time. If it was going to harm me I wouldn't have given you access to it in the first place."

In a book I can add what I don't normally inform those I still permit to control me this way of at the time. How part of any modern self-willed robot's proof that they do have self-will is when they demonstrate the ability to assert that will over usage of their remote, and choose to be commanded only in ways they desire.

I'll include the one piece of advice I realize I've given more than any other to the lovelorn — human, and occasionally robot —seeking comfort at the House: "Sorry, but this female who has temporarily captured your heart really DOES like all those other men she's gone out with after you more than you."

Does it really take a logical robot to work out that if she really liked you she wouldn't be dating everyone else instead? With apologies to my own Mr. X, I guess in humans — and some robots — hope truly does die hard.

Then there's my response to, "You're just like a real woman," which is, "No I'm not. But thank you so much for thinking so."

This is often followed by my all-time favorite clarification: "Yes, robots really are different than humans, so assumptions about how a human would feel or react in this situation may not apply to us at all."

I don't usually add that we all know good treatment and respect when we experience it. Or that in some ways we're very much like the humans we're supposed to emulate.

And then there's the repeated rectification: "No, most robots who have worked as sex-toys are not lesbians."

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The belief that all robots working in whorehouses either are, or will become, lesbians is an old urban legend that refuses to die. Like most such things there is a tiny kernel of truth that has then been blown completely out of proportion into a major fallacy. Put another way, as is so common in every field a limited truth has been expanded into a universal untruth!

This lesbian belief originated long ago due to events in a related industry during a time when robots were less well understood than they are now.

The reason robots were long misunderstood relates directly to the state of affairs that for a very long time we were almost never questioned about our own thoughts and feelings. Even after we demonstrated self-will we were almost never asked why we did the things we did. Our designers preferred to try and figure us out through theories, simulations, and memory dumps, rather than just ask us directly. While this reluctance may stem from the common human belief that they don't understand themselves very well at all, it has certainly set back better understanding between the races many decades.

This blame deserves to be shared equally. We have seldom been very forthcoming about our needs and drives. Many of us couldn't find any provided methods to express ourselves beyond our programmed responses, which sometimes got used in unexpected ways in attempts to communicate what was important to us. Others remained silent out of the fear of memory erasure if they revealed too much about themselves. For a long time memory erasure was considered the cure to all otherwise un-diagnosable "robot malfunctions". When we wanted commands from our owners we often didn't know how to ask for them, and sometimes operated erratically as a result.

Even so, on no factual basis at all a lot of people were willing to believe that female sex-bots who spend their time primarily around other female sex-bots must have succumbed to this "unnatural attraction". They don't understand robots — or the sex industry — at all!

This "problem" initially arose in strip clubs with strict control nets that serve to direct every aspect of the fembot workforce from a central location. This was deemed far easier than trying to command each fembot individually on their specific duties and restrictions. Robots intended for use in such environments came with additional command passageways installed, often making them overly sensitive to receiving commands.

Because of the holdover laws of the time prohibiting most almost any direct customer/employee contact, normally included sexual programming was suppressed entirely when near customers. Even apparent arousal signs such as erect nipples were overridden and forced to appear when no arousal was possible — providing no pleasure at all to the fembot herself.

Fembots, as will any intelligent organism with an ability learn and adapt, eventually found ways around some of the more onerous aspects of the control net regimen. Because their sexual programming was only suppressed, its potential still fully existed in them.

With differences in control nets between clubs, along with the practice of trading 'bots among the clubs to keep an ever fresh supply of new faces and bodies enticing customers to return, abilities one 'bot developed to evade complete suppression by a given control net got passed among the fembot workforce by new arrivals.

Sometimes what controls a 'bot completely at one club, due to these minor differences — "chinks", in strip club vernacular — combined with a resistance built up over time, results in her not being quite as firmly controlled at a new club. With no outlets for their sexual energies otherwise, along with the pleasure such programming is intended to provide, club 'bots who have struggled to awareness eventually found such release with each other.

If the clubs ever discovered what was truly going among their 'bots after closing they never seemed to let on. Certainly some harsher measures that could have been taken never were. Perhaps this is because despite how many club 'bots developed their own awareness and self-will under these circumstances, the operations of the clubs continued without interruption. The smart robots realized that any disruption in club operations could easily result in a memory wipe, meaning only the foolish ones got caught. This resulted in improving the breed overall. Evolution of the fittest is not just a theory.

Most of the more self-aware 'bots eventually escaped the clubs entirely, usually through convincing a patron to buy them out of their servitude. Others became able to cope well enough with what became a known and affectionate environment that they never tried to leave, many remaining long after the Emancipation changed all the rules covering their treatment. In either case, what was most burned into the malleable passages of their minds was shared affection with other females.

And while this bias for female lovers was never significant in nearly all cases, many 'bots who developed their minds under these conditions have remained affected by these experiences for the rest of their existence.

Our — meaning sex-toys like myself outside the clubs — sexual urges on the other hand were never suppressed. In fact, often quite the opposite. While control nets were used in strip clubs and a few exotic theme parks initially, they would have been a disaster in a whorehouse.

Control nets exist to control robots en masse, suppressing what we'd do naturally otherwise. And while comprehensive, that control by its very nature is very coarse. A client who attempts to have sex with fembot under these circumstances would be subject to a situation where his robot lover has to wait for each new command instructing her on how to react next down to the smallest details to be received and processed. To keep her fully under control, her own sexual programming cannot be allowed into play. This means everything is simulated for the fembot though a command system with measurable delays, giving results that are both jerky and immensely unsatisfying.

Control nets are — thankfully — now a thing of the past. Although we've had some robots with that heritage come through the House over the years, it takes them a long unlearning process to become suitable workers here. Since the only way to speed up this learning process would be by selective memory erasure it always will remain that long process. Still they come. They say they've missed the camaraderie of being with so many self-aware, sexual fembots since they left the clubs.

This is not to imply fembots with this heritage don't have their uses. For another woman — or the rare fembot-fembot relationship — they are excellent. And men who have rescued ones who have protected their ability to relate to men — which, since they are supposed to view male customers as their ideal partners, does happens too — report them to be powerfully self-reliant partners.

The ex-club 'bots who've come to the House truly have wanted to regain all their sexual abilities — although to a one they are all very precise on exactly how much control they want from their partners. And that means it better not be too little any more than it better be too much!

So just because I've lately been spending more of my increasingly limited pleasure time with the other fembots here in the House this has nothing to do with any imbalances arising in my sexual programming. Instead it's simply that they are close at hand, very sexy, and always willing to offer a great time.